BAGUIO CITY — The mining industry in the Cordillera region has continued to go deeper into losses, authorities reported on Thursday.
Presenting the 2017 Economic Performance of the Cordillera Administrative Region (CAR), the Philippine Statistics Authority (PSA) in the upland region said the mining and quarrying sector incurred a negative 2.9-percent year-on-year growth rate from 2016.
The agency, however, noted that the mining industry’s 2017 loss was an improvement from its 3.5-percent loss in the previous year, thanks to the high turnout of non-metallic materials, such as sand, gravel, and limestone, which pushed the sector up.
“The low grades of ores and low recovery of metallic minerals were among the reasons for the decrease in the volume of production of the mining sector in the region,” Vivian Romero of the Mines and Geosciences Bureau (MGB) in Cordillera said during PSA-CAR’s presentation.
Romero said mining companies in the region have not yet recovered from the “issues” raised by former environment secretary Gina Lopez, which weighed significantly on the sector’s production in 2017.
These mining companies, she said, include Philex Mining Corp., which produces mainly copper, but also mines silver and gold; Lepanto Mines, which digs gold, silver, and copper; Benguet Corp., which has mining contracts with small-scale miners; and the Itogon-Suyoc Resources, Inc.
The MGB official said the region’s mining sector has been in the downtrend in the past five years.
Data obtained from MGB-CAR showed that a total of 3,657.80 kg. of gold valued at PHP7.4 billion were produced in the region in 2017.
These are lower than in 2016, when gold production posted a total of 4,425 kg. valued at PHP8.6 billion.
The PSA said these figures covered not only the production of the four large mining companies, but also the small-scale mining operations that sold their gold to the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas. (PNA)
